Stuff about writing and publishing, the environment, fantasy film and literature, and just about anything else under the sun.

Monday, May 27, 2013

Review: JUST FOR KICKS by Racheal Renwick

Racheal
Renwick’s enjoyable upper-MG novel Just
for Kicks tells the story of teenager Meriwether Brookes, an orphan who can’t seem to stop herself from causing trouble at school and with
her foster families. When her latest prank
gets her expelled and moved to a new temporary home, Meri’s life looks as if
it’s going to continue its downward spiral.

But then Meri
meets a girl who can fly. And it turns
out she’s not the only one with special talents.

Recruited to
join a group of superhero teens, Meri is whisked away from her world to their
hidden lair. There she discovers her own
surprising abilities (which I’m not about to divulge!), verbally spars with the
group’s adult supervisor, Ox, and begins to fall for Eli, one of the boys in
the group. She also learns that her
parents were superheroes too, killed by the renegade Super known as the
Shadowmaker. And perhaps most
importantly, she learns that she alone possesses the power to defeat him.

The greatest strength of Just for Kicks is the character of Meri:
full of energy and mischief, bristling with anger at her abandonment, and putting
up a show of bravado to hide her feelings of worthlessness. “I know I’m not a super-anything,” she
remarks. “I don’t deserve to be among
people like this. I couldn’t save the
world if I tried. I am, and will always
be, a failure.” Renwick supplies Meri
with a voice that perfectly balances humor, defensiveness, and vulnerability:
“I’ve never been a part of any clique before,” she comments of her new
school. “But I don’t think I’d want to;
giggling’s not my thing, and I’m pretty sure that’s mandatory.” Young readers will identify with this lonely
girl’s desire for belonging, her wish to “finally be a real kid.” But they’ll also note that “being a real kid”
comes with a catch for Meri, who knows she’ll never fit in until she accepts
her superpower—which also means accepting the responsibility of fighting the
dreaded Shadowmaker. The question of
whether Meri will be able to overcome her past and embrace her new role in her
foster family of Supers keeps the pages of Just
for Kicks turning.

Though the writing of Just for Kicks is as lively as its main
character, I felt the story moved a bit too fast, and I found myself wishing
the author had spent more time describing the superheroes’ lair, the individual
powers each teen possesses, and the nature of their
world-within-our-world. It’s perhaps
inevitable that Just for Kicks will
be compared to the Harry Potter series (orphaned hero trains at elite academy
to cultivate world-saving power), and readers may find the alternate world of
Renwick’s novel less well-developed than Rowling’s. This is why one of my favorite scenes in Just for Kicks is the scene in which
Meri’s power first manifests itself: it’s one of the most vivid, detailed, and
well-realized scenes in the book, and it draws the reader right into Meri’s new
world.

I could also wish that the book
had a more unique and descriptive title; Just
for Kicks didn’t seem to capture the character, the world, or the conflict satisfactorily.

But these are minor reservations
about a fun, poignant, and exciting book.
Young readers will enjoy Just for
Kicks, and they’ll look forward to reading more from Renwick’s inventive
mind.

---DISCLOSURE: The author received a free advance PDF of JUST FOR KICKS for review. The author's review is independent and unencumbered.